Sunday Afternoon Fun

We went to our areas last parade back in August, and we remembered to bring the camera to this one. Tyler stayed home with CJ, as CJ is not so much fun at things like this, and Tyler feels he's too old.

Waiting patiently for the candy.

Here it is.

Big brother steps in to help out.

It's too hard to wait until we get home to start in on the candy.

Break Time

After the parade, we went home & Amata helped us get the corn on the cob ready for dinner.

And then, of course, we had to eat it.

Or most of us....Tyler & Cameron decided they don't like corn on the cob anymore.

And then it was time to help Daddy mow the lawn.

Go Twins

I may have mentioned that Caleb has a slight obsession with balls. Okay, when a 2 year old will sit and watch a Twins baseball game on TV...and when they get upset come October when the baseball teams on TV are not the Twins...maybe it is more than a slight obsession. So, we decided to take him to his first Twins game...and only game in the Metrodome.

He was very excited about it, until we dropped the rest of the kids at Auntie Marnee's and discovered that she set up a pool for them. But, we did manage to talk him into coming along with us with the promise of swimming later. (We never said how much later). He was kind of in awe when we walked into the Dome. This is a boy that recognized the word Twins as baseball, so there was a lot to see!

(side note...ignore the smudge on all of the pictures...somehow the camera lens had a smudge on it. I'm wondering if that was at all tied to all of the random pictures of feet that were on the memory card)



We brought Tyler with too...although I believe his bad attitude was the reason the Twins lost. (As soon as he found out who the pitcher was, he said that they were going to lose.)


Caleb enjoyed all of the food required to eat at the ball park...

Yummy Dome Dogs
The did let him bring his Twins cup into the park.
But of course, once he saw we had pop, the cup of water was no longer good enough.

The cotton candy was the big winner, of course. Pure sugar combined with lots of sticky...who doesn't like that?! Look, even Tyler is enjoying it!

But by the end of the 5th inning, all of the excitement wore him out. (The fact that he decided not to sleep at all during the 2 hour drive up to the Cities didn't help.)

Plus, they lost anyway, so he really didn't miss anything. He also did a whole lot better than the two girls sitting directly behind us who were several years older, they were ready to go by the third inning.

All in all he did awesome. I bet he'll be even more excited about going next year to the outdoor stadium!

More Changes

Well, we finally did it. After today, Chris is no longer employed with Schwans. The great part about that is he will no longer be gone 14 hours a day from Monday through Friday. The really scary part about that is that neither of us has another job. Instead, we bought another house and are opening a second daycare.

This means that neither one of us has a guaranteed income. And by the end of the month, we will no longer have health insurance. (Or, at least Chris, myself & the older boys won’t have any, at least the babies get MA until they’re 21 since they were adopted out of foster care.) Right now, the plan is once we have the second daycare filled up, or close to full, we would try to find a semi-affordable plan that will probably have a substantial deductible. Or if that fails…see if we can purchase insurance through MN-Care. Until then, Chris & the boys are under strict instructions not to get sick or injured in the next several months. And I am planning to “stock up” on my migraine meds as much as I can before the insurance is gone. (And while I’m usually not one to give opinions on any pseudo political issue, at this point, I’d have to say I’m “for” national health care because, well, we no longer have an employer paying for most of ours!)

We have tried to be semi-intelligent about this business venture. We did create a budget that I hope is pretty accurate. And the house we found is pretty small and doesn’t have a garage (that’s important also because there’s a whole slew of licensing requirements, including a visit from the fire marshal if you have an attached garage), and therefore pretty inexpensive; although we did have to get a little creative with the financing since nobody is willing to finance a house that you are not going to live in these days. But I still go back and forth about 30 times a day between being very excited and scared to death. Hopefully that will go away soon.

Wish us luck…or better yet pray for us, cuz if this doesn’t work, we could end up on welfare and then you’ll have to support us! (Tee-hee…that was a JOKE! Again, not against welfare, and I do not judge people who are on welfare…as long as they are attempting to work or find work or complete their education.)

Soccer Star

Cameron and Amata are both playing soccer this year.


It’s Amata’s first year, but I thought she’d enjoy it since you pretty much get to run the whole time. She’s been acting a little shy thus far, though. She has kicked the ball a couple of times, though, and the ball has hit her foot a couple of more times, so I think she’d enjoying it.

Cameron is the one that I always used to say just enjoyed soccer because if you just keep running around the field, nobody knows your not actually kicking the ball. However, I can no longer say that. Last year, with Chris as his coach, his team didn’t lose a game, and no other team even scored a goal against them until the very last game. This year, it has been just the opposite. They only have one game left and hadn’t scored a single goal…until last night…when CAMERON scored his team’s first, and only, goal so far this year! Don’t get me wrong, it is very much a team sport, but he literally took the ball from mid-field and made the goal all by himself. Way to go Cameron!!

It’s too bad that this is the last year he can play unless we can figure out a way to get him on a team in another town.